Despite the historical and perpetual trauma, racism, discrimination, socio-economical, and socio-political disparities they have experienced in the United States, Black men have consistently forged ways to demonstrate resilience and assert their own sense of autonomy and masculinity. Nevertheless, their ecological context of living in a country that has historically sought to dehumanize them and eradicate their manhood is cumbersome to their mental wellbeing. Furthermore, the tendency by researchers to pathologize Black males obfuscates the reality of their situation in the United States, minimizing their mental needs. Understanding both the complexity of their ecological context as well as their adaptability and resilience will give behavioral health providers better insight into the realities of Black men's sense of masculinity and implications for their mental health. This chapter elucidates on the complexities of the Black male experience, Black masculinity, and implications for their mental health. The chapter concludes with recommendations for treatment.
TopBlack Male Historical Context
As stated by High (2022), “It is quite challenging, if not impossible, to understand the life trajectories and experiences of Black men without considering the impact of the systems … [they] live within” (p. 48). Although the present-day Black male experience in the United States is shaped by the enslavement of their ancestors, segregation, and a plethora of systematic discriminatory laws and practices, it is important that BHPs recognize that the Black male presence in the United States not only precedes slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation; it began with Black male explorers and settlers in the colonial United States.
For instance, the first known Black male presence in the United States was Niño Pedro Alonso, an explorer who piloted the Santa María during Columbus’s first voyage in 1492 (Knight & Gates, 2016; Morrison, 1978). The Black male presence in the colonial United States continued to flourish through exploration to indentured servitude, with the first recorded Black birth being that of William Tucker, the son of indentured servants, in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1623 (Wade, 2014). Two years later, in 1625, a census of Virginia counted 11 Black men among a population of 1,227 (Smith, 2005). Meanwhile, in the nearby Maryland colony, a Black man named Mathias De Sousa was elected to the Maryland General Assembly in 1641 (Berlin, 1998; Bogden, 2001). Hence, Black men have not only been present in the United States since early settlement; like the early European settlers, through exploration, hard work, and self-determination, they pursued the American dream.
However, this is not the Black male history prominent in the psyche of most Americans, not even that of Black American men. This history was obfuscated by the ensuing 400 years of slavery that took a foothold in the American colonies through the establishment of the United States as an independent nation from Great Britain. Although this new nation asserted in its declaration of independence that “All men … [were] created equal” (Jefferson, 1776, p. 5), Black men were not taken into consideration in the “all men” part (Gordon-Reed, 2020; Gordon-Reed & Onuf, 2016). Instead, they were stripped of their humanity and manhood, relegated to chattel status, and treated as commodities that could be bought, sold, beaten, and bred, like the livestock they tended and the plantations they were forced to work on (Bancroft, 1931; Jim Crow Museum, 2023; Spivey, 2019).
Even after slavery was abolished, laws and policies were put in place to hamper Black men’s freedom and perpetuate their neo-slave status, mainly through the U.S. criminal justice system. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War II, Douglas Blackmon (2009) documented how, mainly in the southern United States, laws were enacted specifically to intimidate Black people after slavery. Consequently, tens of thousands of African Americans, mostly Black men, were capriciously arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests.
Although this neo-slavery system was abolished, Black men’s lives continue to be hampered by today’s criminal justice system. Black men historically and presently continue to be overrepresented in the criminal justice system (Pettit, et al., 2018; Sentencing Project, 2018; Williams et al., 2020). It is widely known by researchers and government entities that today’s criminal justice system, including aggressive policing, disproportionately affects Black men more than any other racial and ethnic demographic in the United States (DeSilver et al., 2020; Hinton & Cook, 2021; Williams & Kniffley, 2020).